


We All Fall Down

by mortalitasi



Series: into the forest [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1549550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It only took one very stupid mistake to destroy everything she'd ever known. Time is not friendly to mortals, and to Grey Wardens, even less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We All Fall Down

**Author's Note:**

> Second fic on here. And of course, it's about one of my favorite characters' emotional devastation. Could you say HUZZAH? Yeah, okay, maybe not. I'll just stick with the writing instead of the awkward author's notes. Hope you enjoy!

He kisses her for the first time under an oak tree on the outskirts of camp.

It’s late in the afternoon on a warm summer’s day and the long-grass is tall and sweet, smelling like home and open fields and the honeyed musk of sunshine on wheat.

They’ve been running and tussling and hiding all day, chasing Merrill through the underbrush and tumbling in the stream, until Marethari called her First away for lessons (and for a change into a dry tunic). Things without Merrill always die down quickly, and with Fenarel absent as well, they’re left to awkwardly dance around the distance between them. They sit with their backs against the tree trunk, shoulders touching, listening to each other breathe and to the wind whistle through the grass and leaves.

“You’re all sweaty,” Tamlen says helpfully, and she laughs, nudging him on the shoulder.

“You’re not any better,” she retorts, wiping the hair from her face. It’s getting long again. She’ll have to ask Ashalle to cut it sometime this week.

“I still won the race.”

“You did  _not_. Climbing over me doesn’t count.”

“Does too.”

She turns to him, suddenly reenergized. “Does not! You’re just saying that because you hate losing.”

Tamlen faces her too, and she’s taken aback by the closeness. Have his eyes always been this blue? “It’s not my fault you’re stupidly competitive.”

“I beg to differ,” Lyna returns quickly. “You’re just jealous because you have the drive of a dead fish.”

He makes an offended sound. “I can do things if I want to bad enough.”

She smirks smugly, crossing her arms and watching him through half-lidded eyes. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Prove it.”

He looks at her for a moment, indecision and something she can’t identify struggling openly on his face. Then he leans over, grasps her face in his hands, and presses his lips to hers. She freezes, sucking a sharp breath in through her nose, hyperaware of the warmth of his palms on her cheeks and the soft nudge of the tip of his nose on her cheek. Good Creators, is this a dream? A pleasant fizz of happiness bubbles up in her heart as she shuts her eyes and responds as best as she can. It’s clumsy, a child’s attempt at romance, but it gets the point across. When Tamlen pulls back, his face is red as a beet and the tips of his ears look like they’ve been dipped in scarlet vallaslin.

Lyna blinks. Once, twice, and then clears her throat. His hands drop away from her. She finds herself missing the contact.

“What was that?” she asks in a raspy voice, sounding like she hasn’t spoken in years.

He looks down at the ground between them, the color in his cheeks getting stronger. “I thought it was pretty straightforward.”

“I… um…”

“… Should I not have— ?”

“No!”

The suddenness of her exclamation startles them both. Lyna wrings her hands nervously. “No, I mean… it was nice. Can we… do it again sometime? I mean, if you want to, that is. Uh…”

They’re still staring at each other when they dissolve into helpless laughter for no other reason than the fact that they seem to be acting like strangers around each other and it’s so ridiculous that if they think about it long enough it becomes  _hilarious_. She rests her head on his shoulder as she laughs, and he winds an arm around her waist. She’s struck by how broad he’s become.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that she had to defend him and Merrill both from the larger children in the clan, armed with nothing but a particularly long stick and the fire in her heart? Wasn’t it just yesterday that they were mucking out the halla pen together, up to their elbows in manure, and vowing to hate each other forever?

His breath tickles her ear when he speaks. “Can I take this as permission to try repeating it later?”

Tamlen’s eyes become comically wide when she throws her arms around his neck and all but shouts “Permission granted!” before her enthusiasm knocks them both very flat.

—

Her forehead hasn’t stopped burning when she sees him again, long after Marethari took her into the aravel with the promises of maturity and adulthood yet unfulfilled.

His ceremony is set to be tomorrow, she knows, but she can’t help feeling bashful as his eyes move over her face. She wonders what it looks like. She can still feel the scorch of the bone needle on her skin, as though the design of Ghilan’nain’s halla horns have come alive on her temples. Marethari has warned her not to touch them for as long as they itch, but she’s just glad it’s over. He knows that the completion of the vallaslin means she didn’t cry out or complain—like he knew she would. She’s always been the best out of them all at bearing pain.

“So,” she says, almost timid, one hand rubbing at the back of her neck. “I didn’t look. Too nervous.”

He brushes the back of his fingers against the only bare part of her face left. “Don’t worry.”

The seriousness in his tone makes her breath catch.

“It’s not any worse than usual.”

“ _Tamlen_!”

—

“Oh, this is such lovely news!”

Fenarel rolls his eyes. “You’re the only one that didn’t know, Merrill.”

The First doesn’t even look affronted, just crosses her legs and claps her hands together again. They’re sitting in a circle, sharing the last of the dried summer fruits preserved in honey, and the night is young, though Merrill’s smile is so bright it could pass for a sun and turn the evening to day.

“Don’t be so loud,” Tamlen mumbles as he reaches for a slice of plum.

They’re not quite used to looking at each other and seeing vallaslin on faces that have been unadorned for so long, but without them something from the group had been missing—now when they sit together they can say they grew up in each other’s company, laughing and stealing and being stupid all with one another, and they can say they’ve all complained about the tedious preparations for the drawing of the vallaslin, that they’ve all earned their due and not yet lost sight of each other. Their childhood is done. Now they can look forward as a fellowship, shoulder-to-shoulder. That evening, Lyna remembers feeling the nearest to invincible she’s ever known.

They’re as odd an assembly as they’ve ever been: the willowy, birdlike First and the three hunters that seem to be her collective shadow wherever she goes—forceful, headstrong Mahariel, dark and pretty and the pride of the clan; Tamlen, bright and pale as a forest wisp, always jesting, always moving; and sharp-faced Fenarel, long-suffering arbiter, who wouldn’t give up his strange spot in this odd conglomeration despite the things he says in its detraction.

“I can’t help it,” Merrill says, her unbelievably large eyes shining with what can only be described as giddy joy. “I keep picturing little Mahariels running around on tiny feet. They would be  _so_  adorable.”

Fenarel has to smack Lyna on the back with enough force to make her rock forward when the apricot she’s chewing makes an impromptu descent with too much speed to be comfortable.

“Merrill,” Tamlen says in a near whine, lowering his head and pressing his face to the back of his knees. His ears have gone conspicuously red, an occurrence that has become much more frequent of late. Fenarel just keeps striking Lyna on the back until the apricot dislodges itself from the spot in her throat and she gulps it away, gasping for breath.

“What?” the First asks through a mouthful of apple. “Was it something I said?”

Fenarel lets himself drop backward, not even wincing when his head bounces on the ground. “I give up,” he declares, hands and feet sprawling. “You’re all hopeless.”

“Shut up.”

“Ow! What was that for?  _Lyna!_ ”

“Being stupid.”

“Friends don’t throw fossilized fruits at friends!”

“Good thing we aren’t friends, then.”

“Elgar’nan’s ass!  _Not the peach!_ F— _”_

Merrill laughs over the din, while Tamlen pretends to know none of them, and Lyna kneels so she can better rub the fruits in Fenarel’s face, scolding all the while. “Don’t use the All-Father’s name in vain, you clout. How do you even know he has an ass?”

“Well,  _you’re_  here, aren’t you?”

Pause. “I hope you like cherries. You’re going to be spitting them for the next ten years.”

“AH—I didn’t mean it— _mercy!_ ”

—

She restrings her bow with a singular care she reserves for nothing else. She only realizes he’s been watching when a cautious hands brushes the ponytail away from her neck and rests it on one of her shoulders. Lyna smiles at the feathery touch of his lips on her.

“Something you’d like to say?”

He hums appreciatively at whatever it is he finds against her skin and nuzzles closer. “After we get back. This evening. I want…”

She stops, looks at him over her shoulder, curious. “You want…?”

“I’m going to talk to Ashalle.”

Lyna laughs and goes back to caring for her weapons. “Because you haven’t seen her in the last two hours?  _She_  may not want to talk to you, you know. After the, uh—moonshine incident.”

“I’m willing to wager what I have to say is going to keep her occupied for a while,” he teases, one arm winding around her from behind.

“Really? And what would that be?”

“I want to ask her for her blessing,” Tamlen says slowly, and knows that the words have sunk in when Lyna grows still in his embrace. She turns around until they’re facing each other, noses brushing, and he can feel the easy rise and fall of her breath. Her eyes are shining with wonder, and it doesn’t change as he bumps his forehead against hers. She looks almost the way she did when they were children, almost the same way she reacted when she first learned the halla let the ones they considered trustworthy on their backs. He remembers thinking she was the most infuriating thing in the world. How the times have changed.

He can’t be sure if there are tears in her eyes—he doesn’t have enough time to make certain of it before she stands on her toes to kiss him, running her fingers through his short hair. She could do that forever and he wouldn’t tire of it.

“If you’d told me I’d be kissing the boy I thought at one point was uglier than halla nuts, I’d have laughed in your face,” she murmurs into his mouth, and he sighs.

“Mood ruined,” he says with mock regret, but she just pokes his cheek with her nose.

“I know you love it,” Lyna taunts.

 _Yes,_ he thinks,  _I do_.

He spends the rest of his life regretting the fact that he doesn’t say so.

—

“ _I suppose so… hey, aren’t you supposed to be assisting Master Ilen today? How did you end up coming with me?”_

_“I wanted to be with you, of course. Idiot.”_

_“I thought that may be the case. I’m… glad.”_

—

They’d often joked around about him burying her earlier than needed, never the other way around.

She’d thought… she’d thought it would have been proper, even if it had come to that, nothing to do with pyres and dry sticks and clearing bodies out of camp. Burning things is the human way of saying farewell. She can’t keep her eyes level on the bonfire when Alistair lays the torch over the kindling. The fire catches quickly and spreads, but not even its heat can scorch away the sorrow that feels like it’s sitting on her every limb, weighing her down, pulling her out of shape.

 _I didn’t want much_.

Her singing isn’t as steady as she wants it to be when she begins the farewell prayer for the departed soul. She knows she’s not the hahren, and that she never will be something like that now—maybe her words won’t have any import to the gods, if they can even hear her, wherever they are. Maybe she’s doing this just for herself. It doesn’t matter. Even if this is just for her, she has to do it before ever moving again. See it through. All the way, standing here, in front of the last dead link to a life she wishes she could return to so badly, so very badly that it aches. She wants him back. Gods, she wants all of them back.

“ _Vhenan him dor’felas—”_

Her voice breaks and wavers, and she presses the back of a wrist to her eyes, determined not to let the tears show. They all know her as their leader. She can’t show this kind of weakness.

Not when she’s saying goodbye. The warmth of the pyre seeps through her leathers and clings to her skin. She tries not to think about what’s burning at its center. She wants to remember him with the affection and surprise and breathless anticipation that seeing him was all about when she first realized what she felt for him. She wants to remember his strong hands and his stupid, stupid jokes, and the little line of fuzz trailing down his nape that she always loved teasing at with her fingers and mouth.

How is she ever going to get past this?

Lyna tenses and jerks in surprise when a hand grasps at her own free one. She looks up through strands of her loose ponytail, the tears still trailing down her cheeks, to see Leliana standing there, a weak smile on her pale face—but there is support in her grip, the quiet kind that only comes from a friendship that has withstood the test of loss and lying and killing things together, along with the occasional angry high-dragon.

A hiccupping sob forces its way out of the Warden as she realizes she’s not alone, and when Leliana puts an arm around her shoulder and continues the prayer where it left off, she feels a small flicker of something light and buoyant rise up in her, past the crushing burden in her heart.

“ _In uthenera nar revas_ ,” Leliana goes on, the song so lovely and resting safe in the timbre of her voice. It sounds right—she’s doing the hymn infinitely more justice than Lyna’s croaking rendition, but the pressure of her hand encourages Lyna to try once more.

The Warden weeps through the entirety of the last verse though Leliana patches through the pauses and rises above the hitches, fixing everything Lyna is too shaken to say clearly.

Leliana sits beside her even when the fire has died down and the only things in motion are the embers floating upward from the smoking remains, rubs comforting circles into her back as the tears die away into lingering shudders, and passes no judgment though Lyna does not move.

It’s a long while before the Warden feels composed enough to pretend at being alright again. 


End file.
